Of One Accord sets Lunch Box summer meal schedule

ROGERSVILLE — The Of One Accord ministry’s Lunch Box will be delivering meals to Hawkins County children throughout the summer from June 3 through July 26.

What started in 2006 as a single mobile cafeteria serving only a handful of locations in Rogersville has expanded to four buses and reaches into Surgoinsville, Church Hill, Carters Valley and other areas including Morristown.

The program offers free lunches Monday through Friday to all children under the age of 18.

The Lunch Box operates four former school buses which have been transformed into mobile cafeterias, two of which are based in Rogersville and two in Church Hill.

Children who receive free and reduced lunches in school get a least one good meal per day on weekdays, but in the mid 2000s it became apparent that many of those children couldn’t count on receiving a good meal when school was out during the summer.

In 2006, former Lunch Box program director Kathy Doerr came up with the idea of transforming a decommissioned school bus into a mobile cafeteria.

Rogersville City School had a contest to name and design the first bus in 2006.